| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Gary J. Hausladen, editor. Western Places, American Myths: How We Think About the West. (Wilbur S. Shepperson Series in History and Humanities.) Reno: University of Nevada Press. 2003. Pp. xiv, 343. $49.95.
The great historical geographers Carl O. Sauer, Isaiah Bowman, James Parsons, and Donald Meinig published pathbreaking books and articles that wedded human activity to particular places across the American West. Offering up a variety of regional geographies set in widely differing cultural and spatial perspectives, Sauer and his colleagues established the real and mythical parameters of a vast region of basins, mountains, and high deserts that defy easy and simple definition. The West is both a definable place on a map with economies, cultures, and topographies that transcend international boundaries and a component in an increasingly global capitalist economy. Grouped into three parts, the essays in this book explore conventional regional themes, the perspectives of marginalized gender and ethnic voices, and truly western cultural expressions that identify the region.	1
Like most collections of its kind, the contributions to have strengths and obvious shortcomings. Editor Gary J. Hausladen's introduction points to the ambiguities of the West as both geographical region and mythical concept, a place "that repeatedly transcends simple historical-geographical description" (p. 1). Despite sharp criticism of some recent work in western history, Hausladen sides with those who argue that the idea of a western region provides a powerful counterpoint to the rampant globalization of the postindustrial world.	. . .

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